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From: breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re:  Re: Easy languages
Message-ID: <879@h-sc1.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19-Jan-86 23:43:19 EST
Article-I.D.: h-sc1.879
Posted: Sun Jan 19 23:43:19 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Jan-86 07:25:23 EST
References: <10132@tardis.UUCP> <771@spar.UUCP> <130@calma.UUCP>
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center
Lines: 44

|||Even in English, which unfortunately lacks a lot of the necessary
|||grammatical machinery, ... - Thomas
|
||    What necessary machinery does English lack?
|
|English fehlt einige gewichte Sachen, sowie ....
|
|How could English *possibly* lack something necessary and still
|be in use?  Perhaps "Thomas" should rephrase his statement, or
|maybe try thinking before posting.

Maybe you can recognise a joke when you see one?
[By the way, the main, no, the only, point of that posting
was that I kept being quoted out of context...]

But to explain in more detail why every now and then I make
annoying little remarks about the English language:

English grammar has been simplified a lot as compared to, say,
German grammar. The English language has simply evolved other
(non-grammatical) means for expressing concepts for which
a German speaker would use grammar. One of these non-grammatical
means is, I would postulate, the immense vocabulary that the
English language has evolved over the centuries.

Now, is there anything wrong with that? Nothing.
Except, that a few aspects of the relationship between
the Americans and 'their' language invite ridicule.
Among those aspects are the obsession with simple
sentence structures, simple grammatical constructs,
and the constant quest for the 'right' word which is,
preferably, either very Germanic or very Romance, depending
on the English instructor in question.

Nowhere else have I seen such a proliferation of
writing manuals, thesauruses, vocabulary cards, and
dictionaries than among high-school and college students
in America. Together with the American attitudes that
the English literature is, of course, the most important
in the world and that everybody in the world is speaking --
or at least ought to speak -- the crown of languages,
this just invites teasing.

					Thomas.